


The Road

by nevarr



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, I don't know what I'm doing, I have so much homework, M/M, Modern day Mad Max: Fury Road, send help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 06:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4908226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevarr/pseuds/nevarr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'The aftermath finds him helping a semi full of half-starved women race across the Outback with that boy, that boy chattering away about Valhalla and engines and someone called Joe. In all his years running, Max never saw anything like it. Some kind of fucked up cult out there in the waste. Some kind of cult that waylays drifters and redistributes their lives.'</p><p>In which Max becomes an unwilling friend for a certain former War Boy. [Modern AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time he and Nux meet, Max is blind raging and the boy is high on something as Max watches his own life sucked away through the tube in his arm. It’s been a few days of hanging there, chained up and snarling while his blood is siphoned into colder bodies.

Then there’s the panic.

The aftermath finds him helping a semi full of half-starved women race across the Outback with that boy, that _boy,_ chattering away about Valhalla and engines and someone called Joe. In all his years running, Max never saw anything like it. Some kind of fucked up cult out there in the waste. Some kind of cult that waylays drifters and redistributes their lives.

He tries to disappear again when they make it back to civilization, but it’s too late for that. The women, they know his face, know where to look for him. So he gives up and returns to the place that came before. He called it home, once. Many, many years ago.

Months pass and everything changes so quickly – _too_ quickly, really; he’s still in the fight-or-flight survival mode that kept his heart beating on the desert highways. It makes his new job difficult. Furiosa, as he learns, was narking for the Victoria Police – had been for some time – when she decided, of her own accord, to steal the dangerous cult leader’s wives. Pretty soft things branded at the neck like cattle. Afterwards, she gently but firmly demanded Max take a position with the department, which ended short a few patrols in the fallout. He _was_ a cop, after all, though he still isn’t sure how she figured it out. Something in the eyes, maybe.

The cops, they were so desperate for the help that they gave him a position without scrutiny into his past. No interview; just paperwork. “For the box,” the chief had said, motioning to the filing cabinet just past the little blonde rookie who had been staring, red-faced, at the same stitch of document for the duration of Max’s visit. Carla, the chief called her. Jumpy thing.

Max doesn’t know if he should bless or curse them for the job. _It’s something to do. Keep you moving._ That’s what Furiosa says.

He stays with Furiosa while he gets his house fixed up – power on, water running, all the taxes and debts and everything sorted by the lucrative system that pushes celebrities to the top of the list. He’s _some_ kind of celebrity now, though he doesn’t give interviews and he’s kept his face out of all that, at least, so there’s a fraction of anonymity in it; the papers don’t even know his name, only mention him in passing ( _“The four surviving women were aided by the Victoria PD, a boy from the compound, and an unidentified homeless man.”)_ and he’s grateful for it. Grateful Furiosa and the Wives don’t push him into the spotlight on his request.

Still, he’s undeniably tangled up in the investigation, in the glut of bodies being flushed out of the desert – some breathing, some not – and his drifting days are over. He falls back into a working pattern without much difficulty. Wake up. Patrol. Paperwork. Eat. Sleep.

Max finds it’s disturbingly easy to return to.

He’s been in his own house for a little less than a fortnight when Capable shows up at his door one Saturday morning. He knows it has something to do with the trial, can see it in the worried split of her lower lip, the way she tugs it between her teeth. It’s been plastered all over the telly for months now, the cultish gang discovered out in the middle of the desert on an old nuke farm – international news sensation of the year, it seems like. He doesn’t think Capable minds the attention; she sparkles during interviews, shoved to the front in Angharad’s absence while the Dag chews her nails off in back.

But this, on the front porch, it isn’t the strong face she’s been presenting to the world. This is the frightened, wild girl he held at gunpoint days and days ago. _So young_. They’re all so young.

Capable gives him a tentative smile, and he grudgingly moves aside to let her in from the heat. She steps past him, toeing off her shoes and kicking them aside as she surveys her surroundings. The house is musty, stagnant, years of built up dust and grime mucking the floor. Max cleaned up the detritus and other waste left by crashers over the years a full week ago, but the smell isn’t gone, the dust; a good deal of the furniture is broken or missing. “Nice place.” He feels a pang at that, at her sincerity. To think Capable might be the first woman to set foot there since… since…

“Tea?” He swallows the madness down.

“That would be wonderful.”

He leads the way to the kitchen, stiff with the silence crushing around them, but he doesn’t want to push just yet. She didn’t come for a social visit – that’s Furiosa’s duty – and he trusts she’ll explain herself before long. _Just get her comfortable._ He almost snorts at that. It’s good practice in manners, at least. Besides, he doesn’t mind Capable.

She sits at the small, rounded table that takes up the bulk of the cramped room, scratching at her wrists, tapping her feet sporadically. “How are you settling in?” she asks, at length. Max grunts. The kettle is beginning to warm beneath his fingers, old, banged up metal thing. He can see why nobody bothered to take it.

“It’s alright. Strange,” he says. The thirsty rasp is gone from his voice, but it’s rough still, strained with disuse. He sets out two Styrofoam cups.

Capable nods along to that. “Very strange. Like being born again.”

Max knows the Wives have been sharing an apartment in Furiosa’s building, saw them from time to time when he was half awake on her couch, but he hadn’t given much thought to their situation as a whole. From what he understands, the Wives were raised in captivity, taken from their beds as children. They only knew what Miss Giddy told them of the world beyond Citadel.

He makes a noise of agreement, sets milk and sugar on the dirty table before his guest.

They drink their tea in near silence, Capable occasionally commenting on the house or asking about his work, Max responding in stilted, shortened idioms. When his lips are touching the dregs, she scrubs at her hair and finally gets to it.

“Nux needs somewhere to stay while we’re gone.”

He chokes on his tea. “No,” he says, voice hard flat and eyes gone flinty. He’s surprised, too, at the implication there – the War Boy is _living_ with them? The Wives? He tries to imagine that skeletal thing braiding hair, cooking dinner, comes up blessedly short.

“Look, he won’t be any trouble – I mean he _might_ , but he’s _trying_ , really – he’s too sick to go, Max, and we can’t just leave him –”

“Sick?” Max interjects sharply.

Capable immediately looks guilty, eyes slanting down to the cup wrapped up in her hands. “Well, sort of. He’s not liking the doctors much, not after they cut that thing out his neck, and he won’t go back. Just wants to work on cars all the time. Gone through three damn engines this week alone. I think –” She chokes off into silence, shrinking sadly into her rickety chair. “I think he _wants_ to die.”

“Wouldn’t you?” he asks, and Capable breathes in a shaky sigh. Max doesn’t want to sympathize with any of this right now. Doesn’t want that fucking child in his house. But he doesn’t like crying much, and he can see Capable’s about to start at it, so he clears his throat and puts his hand on her arm. “How…” He winces, tries again. “How long?”

She doesn’t exactly go bright at the question, but the fear that’s tightened her mouth eases back. “A week, that’s all. Just a week.” She closes her eyes. “He’s not bad, Max; he just doesn’t know what to do. None of us do.”

He nods. Clears his throat. Nods again. “Alright. Bring him here.” He pats her hand, awkward, wooden.

There’s a lot of teary-eyed gratefulness after that, one-sided discussion of specifics, hugging and touching, and Max standing rigid through it all. After Capable leaves – and he’s surprised he didn’t hear her before, roaring up on that motorbike – he clears the table, dumping the remaining tea into the sink before leaning up on it and pulling out his mobile. It’s an ugly block of a thing, but it was a gift, so he’s hard-pressed to complain. It works well enough.

He finds Furiosa’s number, presses enter and listens to the phone chirp at him. She picks up on the third ring. “What?” Her breath whistles hard and fast through the speaker, like she’s been running; he doesn’t doubt that she has. For the past few months she’s been taking crash courses in police work to make her position permanent.

“Why not just ask, yourself?” he drawls out. He’s had enough time to himself that his irritation is no longer real, but, still. He has to ask. Knows she’s behind it. Capable would never come to him unprompted.

She pauses, lets her breathing even out. “They have to learn to do these things themselves. I’m not – they need to know they can trust you. Talk to you.” Her voice softens, crackles. “Like I do.”

He knows what she wants to say. _I’m not always going to be there._ He’s heard it enough, _said_ it enough to last a lifetime. “Alright.” There was never a hope for him, then. She’d’ve come to his door if he refused Capable, ordered him into submission. He should be angry, he thinks, annoyed at least, but there’s no energy for it.

“I’ll drop him off Monday.”

“I know.”

There’s another pause, Furiosa’s breathing still rasping through the speaker at intervals until finally she says, “Thank you,” and the line goes dead.

Max stares out the kitchen window, thumbing at the phone in his hand, for a good hour after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...yeah. I'm kind of surprised at how few Nux/Max fics there are out there. Figured I'd help rectify that. 
> 
> I'm also procrastinating pretty hard. 
> 
> Feedback is love. xoxo


	2. The Arrival

Monday comes more quickly than Max would’ve liked. He’s called out of work on account of a personal emergency – really, he just wants to keep an eye on Nux for his first day there, get a feel for the havoc the kid might wreak – and he’s gone irate again. Sunday was a blur of whatever tidying he could manage, and half-assed yard work that left him sore in ways that didn’t seem fair, what with all the time he spent dragging his broken body across the Australian countryside. Sleep was fitful and unfulfilling. There hadn’t been an opportunity to get to the store over the weekend, so he’s running on empty, jumpier than usual.

Furiosa pulls up in her new rig – a modified Charger she restored with his help – around eleven thirty, Nux and Capable in tow. Max is surprised to see the redhead, but when he observes the sulky way Nux hangs behind her, he can understand why she came. Capable whispers to the boy in a soothing way that sours his face even further. Max breathes, calms himself. It’s going to be a long day.

Nux looks different. Wrong, somehow. There’s a fuzz of brown hair coming in on his head, thinner than it should be – in fact, everything about him is thin. The War Boy that Max met on the road was sickly but lean, powerful. This boy is wasting away.

“Here.” Furiosa hands Max a wad of bills, and he shrugs, crumpling them into a pocket. “For the trouble.” He doesn’t need the money. It’s some kind of peace offering. Put it in the bank with the rest of it, he thinks. Untouched. Furiosa turns to Capable. “It’s time to say goodbye.”

Max goes slack at those words. ‘ _It’s time to say goodbye.’ They’re screaming, tearing at him as they burn, and_ _he can’t get the fucking door open. ‘Max, please!’ The youngest, the little girl called Fessa; she’s got a grip around his wrist through the shattered window, and it’s cutting her all up. ‘Help us, Max!’_

“Max?”

He blinks, looks around to see the three of them staring at him, Capable and Furiosa pictures of masked concern. Nux just seems wary, ticking his thumb against the inside of his cheek. Max grunts, turns and opens the front door, waving the boy inside. Capable squeezes his good shoulder one last time. “Sunday, Nux!”

Nux nods jerkily, and Max doesn’t miss the way that pale throat convulses, barely noticeable, as he turns away from the two women.

Furiosa takes a step forward as soon as Nux is out of sight, placing a careful hand on Max’s arm. “He’s got an appointment in the city. Friday, three o’clock. Get him there – sedate him, if you have to. He needs a doctor.” Max bows his head in assent. Not what he signed on for, he thinks, but he’s seen Nux now, understands why they’re worried. Hardly anything left but skin and scars.

They say their goodbyes, Furiosa clapping Max on the shoulder and Capable waving shyly as she slides into the passenger’s seat. He watches them go until the dust kicked up after them has settled once more, unwilling to face the manic mass of bones just beyond the front door. That is, until he hears a crash from the kitchen.

He finds Nux dancing in circles around a mass of dodgy wooden shards that used to constitute a chair – the same chair Capable sat in when she came asking favors Max can’t quite substantiate granting at the moment. “I’m sorry; I was just sittin’, I swear, didn’t touch nothin’ –” Nux sees Max’s face, peters off into nervous twitching.

The boy’s bleeding, Max notes. Stuck in the hand by a nasty spike. He just shakes his head, says, “There’s a broom in the hall,” and goes to look for the first aid kit, banging cabinets open. He can hear Nux scramble about the hallway, fruitless, cursing, so he yells, “Closet!” and everything goes extraordinarily quiet.

Then, muffled through the thin walls, “Got it.”

Nux skulks back with the broom crushed up under one arm, and Max still hasn’t found the damn aid kit. Probably gone, stolen, like most of the little things he left behind. “Ain’t done sweepin’ since I was a pup,” the boy says, already working the shards into a neat pile. Max straightens, sighs.

“Give me that,” he grabs the broom from Nux’s hands, but the haft of it is already sticky with drying blood. He grimaces, motions to the kitchen counter. “Go stand over there.”

Nux obeys, head ducked down in submission or fear – Max can’t tell which; likely some combination of the two. He’s hit Nux before, wanted to do it several times more, just to shut him up. But this isn’t the kamicrazy kid he knew in the desert. He glances over, sees Nux bent against the sink, biting the skin away from his nails. No, definitely not the same kid.

He doesn’t have anywhere to put the rubbish, so Max just leans the broom against the wall and tells Nux not to move. He has an aid kit in his cruiser – they all have them – and it’ll have to do until he can get to the store. He finds it after a bit of rummaging and almost gives it to Nux until he realizes that, judging from the scars crisscrossing his body, Nux probably has very little experience with first aid.

Instead, Max sets the kit down on the kitchen table. “Move.” He washes his own hands first, then pulls a small bottle of rubbing alcohol and a pair of steel tweezers from the kit. “Give me your hand.”

Nux complies, still chewing nervously at the fingers of his good hand, blue eyes wide and darting. “Dunno why they dumped me with you, Bloodbag.” Max scowls at the nickname, yanking out a large splinter harder than necessary. Nux doesn’t seem to notice. “Useless here. Begged ‘em to take me, y’know. Real nice, too. Washed up after meals for a whole week.” There’s that image Max tried to avoid of Nux playing housewife.

Nux’s leg is shaking against the counter, and Max grabs his thigh tight, gritting out, “Stop that.” Nux goes very still, and Max resumes his work.

“Make you a new chair, if you want. ‘M good with my hands, at least.”

“It’s fine,” Max cuts him off. Doesn’t want to hear it. The chair was a time bomb, anyway, pilfered from the dump a few miles west of town. He’ll just go find another – hopefully less rotted, this time. Finished, he drops the tweezers on the countertop and dumps rubbing alcohol over Nux’s hand without ceremony. That earns him a murmur of discomfort.

“Let it breathe,” says Max. “I’ll wrap it up in the morning.”

Nux grins. It’s the first smile Max has seen on the boy’s face since he can remember. “Just a scratch, Bloodbag. You’re a right Organic, you know?” He slides from the counter, squinting and prodding at his hand.

Max isn’t ever really sure what the War Boy is talking about, so he just grunts, turns away and begins clearing up the aid kit. “I have to go to the store,” he says, rinsing the tweezers, dunking them in alcohol. “You’re coming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry; the chapters will get longer. I actually kind of have an idea about where this is going. Questions and comments are welcome, but I intend to clarify a lot of stuff in upcoming postings! xoxo


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